Friday, July 21, 2006

Vanity Kills

Random topic generated by a conversation with the boyfriend today:

Have you ever had someone tell you you're so funny, LOL and ROFL and so on, and right as you're starting to bask in it, right as a Grease chorus starts belting out "Tell me more, tell me more" in your mind, that person switches to telling you about someone else who's so funny, LOL ROFL--except, that someone else happens to be someone you don't find funny at all? I don't mean like, you're outraged by them, or they're just not in line with your particular comic sensibilities--I mean like, to you, this someone else is simply not funny, not ever, not even a little bit, not even accidentally. That someone else has never been even six blocks south of funny. Maybe that someone else is, in fact, your personal definition of the opposite of funny. The Unfunny. The Laughslayer. The Comedy Antichrist.

And then it hits you: "Wait a minute--maybe that means I'm not funny either, because clearly my friend here has no taste in comedy."

Substitute someone telling you you're a good dresser and then, I don't know, raving about Chloe Sevigny in the next breath, if you prefer. But you know what I mean? You know what general phenomenon I'm talking about?

What the hell do you do when that happens? Besides cry.

(NOTE: Don't nobody get paranoid--this is not anything recent. The man and I were just reminiscing.)